Technology

When ChatGPT launched, in November of 2022, it started a race that almost immediately consumed the tech industry. OpenAI didn’t invent the concept of AI, but most of the state-of-the-art technology was confined to research labs at companies and institutions around the world. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. And better than anyone expected. So many companies decided they needed to catch up as quickly as possible, by any means necessary, or risk losing the battle for maybe the most important technology ever.On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about one version of that scramble. The Washington Post’s Will Oremus joins the show to talk about the details he and his team uncovered about “Project Panama,” a huge effort inside Anthropic to access and digitize vast quantities of book in ...

China is banning Tesla-style concealed door handles on electric vehicles to address safety concerns regarding people getting trapped inside their cars. The ban will take effect on January 1st next year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s announcement, and will require all vehicles sold in China to have mechanical release door handles on the inside and outside.The ban specifically targets hidden handles that retract to sit flush with vehicle doors, a design popularized by Tesla and has since been adopted by other EV makers. According to China Daily, more than 60 percent of the top 100 hybrid and electric vehicles sold in China in April 2025 featured hidden handles.China proposed these new rules in December last year, following a string of reports in which ...

Luffu users can ask the system questions and get personalized answers for individual family members, like how a change in diet could affect the quality of sleep, whether someone remembered to take a specific medication, or provide answers to a doctor’s questions during an appointment or emergency without having to jump around between various apps. The AI also proactively watches for changes in patterns and can share “insights and alerts” such as when medications have been missed, or flag metrics that could be signs of more serious health issues developing.The new platform is currently in private testing, but you can sign up to join a waitlist on the Luffu website. It will first be limited to a mobile app, but eventually the startup plans to expand into “complementary hardware devices th...

Google Home users, your long nightmare is over. The platform has finally added support for buttons. The release notes for a February 2 update state that several new starter conditions for automations are now available, including “Switch or button pressed.”Smart buttons are physical, programmable switches that you can press to trigger automations or control devices in your smart home, such as turning lights on or off, opening and closing shades, running a Good Night scene, or starting a robot vacuum.A great alternative to voice and app control when you want to control multiple devices, smart buttons are often wireless and generally have several ways to press them: single press, double press, and long press, meaning one button can do multiple things.Most smart home platforms support using...

“Finally.” That was my first reaction when I heard Google would combine Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system. Android has long struggled on tablets, and ChromeOS always felt like too much of a stripped-down alternative to tempt me away from Windows and Mac. So last week, it was exciting to see a leaked first glimpse at Google’s Aluminium OS, and hear it may already be slated for an Intel Panther Lake laptop dubbed “Ruby” and a “Sapphire” high-end tablet.But the future may not be coming as fast as you’d think, and it might be messy when it gets here. According to previously unreported court documents in the Google search antitrust case, Aluminium won’t see a full release until 2028.Though Google’s head of Android, Sameer Samat, said last September that the combination of A...

The Tesla Model S is at the end of its illustrious 14-year run — and what a dizzying ride it’s been.In 2012, when Tesla made its first Model S deliveries to customers, Facebook acquired Instagram. Apple launched the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. Barack Obama sailed into his second term. Superstorm Sandy shredded New York City and highlighted the ominous threat of climate change. As the nation recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, cautious optimism flowed through the airwaves as medium-sized tech companies seemed positioned to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Early adopters were whimsical pioneers racing faster to the future, breaking things and iterating for good. So was the mood when the Model S came to market and quickly made Tesla the world’s most interesting car company.The Ro...

La capsule Orion, sur l’air de lancement 39B, au Centre spatial Kennedy, en Floride, aux Etats-Unis, le 1ᵉʳ février 2026. STEVE NESIUS / REUTERS La NASA a procédé, mardi 3 février, à un test de sa fusée SLS (Space Launch System) qui devait s’élancer le dimanche 8 février dans la soirée (la matinée du lendemain à Paris), pour la mission Artemis-2 qui doit faire voler des astronautes autour de la Lune pour la première fois en plus de cinquante-trois ans et Apollo-17, a communiqué l’agence spatiale américaine sur son compte X. « Nous abandonnons la fenêtre de lancement de février », a annoncé l’administrateur de la NASA, Jared Isaacman, sur X, qui explique que, « lors de l’essai, les équipes ont dû gérer une...

En mars 2025, le New York Times révélait l’existence d’une liste de près de 200 mots que l’administration fédérale américaine demandait de retirer des documents scientifiques, des appels à projets et des sites d’agences publiques. Parmi eux : « handicap », « inégalités », « diversité ». Cette liste ne cesse de s’allonger. On y voit apparaître des expressions centrales de la recherche biomédicale et clinique, comme « fondé sur les données de la science » (evidence-based), « à risque » ou encore « soins centrés sur les personnes » (person-centered care). C’est ainsi tout un langage – et, avec lui, des manières de penser, de mesurer et de soigner – qui est progressivement démantelé. Les sites institutionnels ont rapidement été mis en conformité. Des informations et de...

The day after the second general strike in Minneapolis, the labor unions of Portland, Oregon, marched in solidarity. It was the warmest day that Portland had seen in a while, with sun peeking out from the clouds here and there. Many people had brought their entire families; not just older children, but toddlers in strollers and wagons, too. Some brought their dogs. The chants were typical: “ICE out of Portland” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” But the children were so visible that City Councilor Mitch Green felt a slight twinge of awkwardness. “There’s some other folks saying, you know, ‘Fuck ICE,’ but, like, there’s children in front of me. I don’t want to say the F-word, you know?”But that was very soon the least of his concerns, as tear gas engulfed the protest at...

The original Switch is officially Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS.In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch “while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration.”Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone So...